I quit with dudes.

I’m not even kidding. I can’t with dudes. Seriously. This week has been rough for a number of reasons, but dudes; mostly it is you. Yes, all men. I started my week reading about how one in three college men would rape if they could get away with it, which by the way makes my stats, of most rapes are committed by a small number of men, garbage. Because wanting to rape and being a rapist aren’t that far from each other on the “I want to burn off my skin before I let you touch me, ever” scale. What? Like you don’t use that metric?

Look, I’ve come to terms with a lot. I have terrible taste in men from the start so I’m well informed about what’s going to happen here, but seriously? Then we moved into the a high profile rape case—where the defense is claiming a drunk rapist can’t be held accountable for his actions, WTF, right only women . A second where the father is pretty much writing a swan song about his son being railroaded by the FEMINISTS, which I guess means we have super villain powers, ok cool. Not like the victim had to transfer and move. Oh, and did I mention there is some kind of rape money which all women get for being raped? Which is totes true guys, why else would we be expected to pay for our own rape kits? All I want to do is watch Selma, basketball highlights, and drink until none of this exists anymore.

The new study out of the University of North Dakota, says about one in three men would rape if no one would find out and they wouldn’t face any consequences. Take a minute and shower. I read about this over on ThinkProgress in a piece by Tara Culp-Ressler. Of course, when the researchers used the word rape, the numbers dropped because you’d rape someone as long as we call it something else, I guess like non-consensual sex, which is in fact rape. Obviously, forcing someone to have sex isn’t the same as the crime of rape because REASONS. I’ll make a leap here, and assume it is because rape is something bad men do, who happens to look like an population underrepresented in higher education.

The survey was small with 73 men in college as participants, and 31.7 percent said they would act on “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they were sure they’d  get away with it. Happily only 13.6 percent said they would act on “intentions to rape a woman” with the same confidence of getting away with it. I feel like these are the people who drop buzz words in interviews, but have no idea what any of them mean. Rape has a connotation, and that is what this is about. We have successfully trained a group of men to realize the word rape is bad, but not that committing rape is bad. And don’t even get me started on those who would straight up rape. Researchers want to do this study again on a larger scale in hopes of informing the conversation around sexual assault on college campuses.

The study also found men who were open to raping a woman were more likely to display hostile attitudes toward women (shocked, shocked I say), but men who would force a woman to have sex, but reject the term rape were less openly hostile to women. However, these men were still linked to what researchers called “callous sexual attitudes,” which are a set of cultural stereotypes about women as objects and men as aggressors that contributes to hyper-masculinity. To quote the researchers, “In this sense, using force to obtain intercourse does not become an act of rape, but rather an expression of hyper-masculinity, which may be thought of as a desirable disposition in certain subcultures.”

Culp-Ressler’s article concludes with a list of other studies that have similar findings where men feel entitled to women’s bodies, entitled to coerce sex, and women to expect violence.

SCOTUS says fuck you to care workers.

As I tweeted yesterday, SCOTUS is really just giving working women the finger. The Hobby Lobby decision is about working women. The Harris v. Quinn decision is also about working women. We all knew we were in trouble when SCOTUS Blog announced that Alito was giving both opinions. Think all the way back with me, I wrote about this a long time ago. You can read the ThinkProgress article. This was about whether “partial public employees” can be required to pay union dues for the collective bargaining they benefit from. I know, you’re wondering what the hell is a “partial public employee,” which I’m comfortable defining as low-wage care workers who are largely women of color.

The 5-4 decision could have been worse, but it is still pretty bad. The decision leaves the financial viability of unions in jeopardy, but Alito’s opinion hints at further problems in the future because he says allowing unions to collect dues from nonmembers as “questionable on several grounds.” The home health workers are hired and fired by individuals so they aren’t covered by the law requiring them to contribute to the union if they benefit from the collective bargaining. Technically, this is a First Amendment decision. It is a blow to workers, unions, and a high-five to “right to work.” You can read the full opinion.

The next shot looks like it will be coming out of California where teachers are suing to get out of union dues on First Amendment grounds as well. Part of me wonders if this logic can be applied on a larger scale.

Once again, I’d like to point out who exactly this impacts: unions and women of color. It is almost like the years of discriminating against care workers is coming back to bite unions in the ass. Not that that makes it ok. Really both this decision and the Hobby Lobby decision just reinforce that this SCOTUS’s legacy will be as a corporate champion. Corporations are valued as entities over people and individual rights. This Harris decision is particularly insidious to me because it hinges on classifying a certain kind of employee as not deserving of collective bargaining.

I don’t really know where to go from here. Either the left is going to get serious about workers, people of color, women, trans people, etc or they aren’t. If they are going to get serious there needs to be some kind of organization. I read a tweet about how SCOTUS pissed off women, which is going to be dangerous for the conservative right. Another tweet about how the Democrats are on the side of women. And now, President Obama used on executive order to increase border enforcement. These aren’t the movements of progress. Time to force our team to play ball or go with someone else. I want proof these jerks are on our side or we need to cut the dead weight loose.  And our side is women’s rights, labor rights, immigration rights, voting rights, etc.

Personal news: This is going to be the longest three day week ever. I’m not guaranteeing I’m going to blog Thursday through Monday because I’m taking another anti-media vacation. I’m going to read and write for four days. I don’t know if I can handle trying to be productive as well. I might just say fuck this and read fiction all weekend. On that note special thanks to C, BA, and BigKate for their attempts to help me with this block.

A feminist got her first copy of Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale today

Why? Because when Joe Francis has to declare bankruptcy. So we’re winning. After fighting for months to get VAWA passed, after enduring idiotic comments about rape, and just about every other loss we’ve suffered including state by state attempts to limit women's reproductive rights from abortion to the pill, we get this. And it is Christmas. Annie-Rose Strasser had this story over at ThinkProgress.

Soft-core porn company Girls Gone Wild (GGW) is filing for bankruptcy because they suck hard. The company is owned by Joe Francis, and the decision is largely based in Francis’ personal money troubles including debt and owing a casino.

However, there is plenty of financial trouble to go around for Francis after all there is many a lawsuit against him and his company for exploiting women, particularly underage women. In their bankruptcy filing, Girls Gone Wild cites debt owed to Tamara Favazza, a woman who sued the company for putting her on film against her will. She won the suit and $5.8 million from Francis. Bananas! USA! USA! She sued in 2008, and she claimed someone showed her breasts while filming in a bar in St. Louis for the “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy” DVD series. According to the court documents, Favazza won a $5.8 million judgment and then sued Francis, Girls Gone Wild Brands, and Mantra Films last year in federal court in Missouri to collect. SNAP. Looks like Francis and co picked the wrong woman to exploit.

GGWBrands calls Favazza’s claim a “trade debt” in the bankruptcy petition. “Trade debts” in bankruptcy are debts owed to suppliers, vendors, and other service providers. Favazza isn’t alone in demanding remuneration from Francis and co. Lindsey Boyd sued GGW back in 2004 for running video of her at 14 years old flashing a cameraman for beads. The case was decided in November 2012, and Boyd lost not because the claim was inaccurate, but only because Georgia had no law in place that protects her photo from being used for commercials against her consent. In 2008, four women sued Francis collectively with similar claims of emotional damages from being filmed while underage. These cases were tossed because the company had waivers from them.

Francis has spoken to how exploitation is a part of his business model and integral to his company. In 2006, he plead guilty to exploiting minors and paid a $500,000 fine for admitting he didn’t keep track of the identities or ages of the women (and girls) in his videos. We should probably talk about him being an idiot. He plead “no contest” for charges of child abuse and prostitution for which he served a year in jail. Francis has to post a 1.5 million bond, which hopefully contributed to his financial problems.

Favazza’s role in the GGW bankruptcy is symbolic of her victory, and her case is one of thousands of women who will be glad to see the company die, and the ruin of  the bastard who ran it and insisted it continue to operate.

Does Yahoo! still exist or is this a joke?

First, I’d like to begin by asking the question we’re all thinking: Why is Yahoo even relevant anymore? Second, I’d like to say Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s CEO is making really bad decisions for her company, which is well within her right.

Sarah Jaffee noted in her piece, “Trickle-Down Feminism,” that some feminist leaders are obsessed with breaking the glass ceiling, which is the implementation of capitalist feminism where CEOs like Mayer succeed at the cost of low-wage women. This is a brilliant article, and everyone should read it.

XOJane had a piece by S.E. Smith on Mayer and Yahoo!. Mayer rejects the word feminism, while saying she believes in all the things feminists do like equality. Some feminists were using her as an icon of how to break through the glass ceiling, but I suspect that is about to change. Mayer believes she needs to be “genderblind” which is kind of like “colorbind” in its stupidity where you choose to ignore realities that challenge your position of privilege.

The big thing drawing attention right now is Mayer’s move to end working from home, which is effective in June. Employees only have a few months to transition. According to a leaked memo, the company suggests that their employees need to “work together” by being together in the office. Working from home and flex-scheduling was a huge victory for women.

So head nod to the fact women are still generally the primary caregivers even with careers. Also, upper class women who work outside the home may opt to employ other women to care for their children during the day. Working from home allows women to continue their career while having a family. For a company like Yahoo!  this is a huge step backwards. Men also lose when the option of working from home disappears. However women are disproportionately harmed by policies like this, and women of color are in an even more vulnerable position.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a survey tracking the work-from-home trends. It shows white and Latino/as are more likely to perform paid work from home, but Black and Asian women are more likely to bring work home with them and not be compensated. Yahoo is sending a clear message to its employees: be in the office or we don’t want you. Flex scheduling has been proved to improve employee welfare and productivity. Additionally, work culture where this is not an option are generally not woman friendly because women are so frequently assigned as caregiver.

Mayer has previously implied maternity leave is unnecessary opting to work remotely during her’s (ironic). Mayer also doesn’t think of herself as a feminist, which upon her declaration triggered concern for a lot of people whether she would improve workplace policies. She obviously employed equality as women being like men instead of reshaping the world so everyone can achieve success. Anyone who wants to fight their way out of capitalism by staying in the capitalist framework will be disappointed. I hope someone is watching and keeping track of how many people lose their jobs at Yahoo!.

Jane Farrell for ThinkProgress wrote on the disappointment many of Mayer’s supporters felt after the announcement to cut the work from home option. Farrell acknowledges the benefits of fostering a creative and collaborative workplace, but points out like Smith that Mayer is ignoring a lot of studies that prove telecommuting and workplace flexibility benefit the company. Mayer also is disregarding how most American families now require two working parents and the realities of commuting, childcare, and productivity.

Farrell says it best:

“If Mayer’s concern was really about employees not doing their work and still getting paid, the appropriate course of action would have been to let them go. By implementing this sweeping policy without consideration for workers who need work-from-home policies to be the best employees—and caregivers—they can be, she is risking losing talented employees (and having to face the high costs associated with replacing them) and generating resentment within the company. Mayer’s lack of vision is truly a letdown for workers everywhere.”

This is why we don’t apply a label like feminist to someone who doesn’t want it. Mayer is not a feminist she is a capitalist who has benefited from some feminist victories. She like equality in theory and as it applies to her, but not so much when it comes to everyone else. One of the first victories of the women’s movement was universal childcare, but the bill was vetoed by Nixon and never revisited. Instead, we worked hard to get maternity leave, sexual harassment law, domestic violence law, and flex-time.

I worked from home for two years and found it wasn’t for me. It also wasn’t for several other coworkers; we liked working in the office most of the time with one another. However, it was really convenient when we had doctors’ appointments and other things come up during the day. Of course none of us had children, which greatly impacts the degree to which flex-time is needed.

One of the great metaphors about rising up is pulling the rope up behind you. You see when you’re form the outside group it is a rope not a ladder. Mayer like many others before her is pulling the rope up so the next women have to find a new way. It is everyone responsibility to make the life user settings easier for the person behind you. This is counter to everything capitalism has taught us.

However, part of this drama is really unsettling for me because I generally spend more time looking at the labor concerns of low-wage workers, and they rarely if ever have the option to work from home, unless it is someone else's home. Of course, my dragging women who have been working from home back into the office may create a need for domestic workers within those homes. 

Gov. Kasich now supports Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid.

So you know, it’s cool now, because it helps Ohio’s poor, which is exactly what camp Obama said the entire time. ThinkProgress did a nice write up on Kasich accepting the expansion. Kasich announced on Monday that Ohio’s Medicaid program will extend health coverage to about 600,000 low-income Ohioans, which is Kasich accepting Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion. Also, the state will save $13 million dollars over the next seven years. Kasich did specify that he “is not a supporter of Obamacare,” but that this “makes great sense” for the state of Ohio.

“We’re doing this for a variety of reasons. Number one, many of these people who are below the $14,000 in income—some of the poorest Ohioans—they get their primary care in an emergency room. Now that is not the best way to get people primary care. Not only is it not good for them, because it doesn’t allow them to get healthy, but secondly, it drives up the cost of everybody’s health care. […]

“If we were to reject extending Medicaid, I believe that we would create financial chaos, particularly across out rural hospitals…because they would no longer be able to get reimbursed for the care that they provide. It would create, in my judgment, a financial mess. In addition to this, many of you know that I have really wanted to work hard to restore the safety net for the mentally ill and the addicted. The fact is, extending Medicaid is going to significantly allow out local providers---of both mental health services and addictive services—with some space and some opportunity to begin to rebuild that safety net, so we don’t find as many of our mentally ill in our jails today because they receive no care. […]

“I’m not a supporter of Obamacare. I don’t believe in the individual mandate…and I decided to move forward with the federal exchange rather than the state exchange, where I believe we would have lost control. But I believe this makes great sense for the state of Ohio.”

Kasich joins four other GOP Governors to embrace the expansion of the Medicaid program including Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and North Dakota. Other Republican leaders across the US are refusing to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which of course harms the poor. According to ThinkProgress, ten states have rejected the Medicaid expansion (Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas) some of these states have the highest rates of uninsured persons in the nation, of course with GOP governors (including Texas, Florida, and Georgia).